Now, he said, nearly 2/3 of companies expect to spend more on facilities and equipment and about 50 percent plan to hire for new positions - while over half plan to increase wages and benefits.

However, that step to boost pay, so far, has largely been missing in southeast Michigan.

"The wind's at our back," said Tom Kelly, CEO of Automation Alley in Oakland County, as he echoed the optimism of Timmons.

Yet wages remain an issue as the industry tries to attract new talent.

"Wages have not caught up to that reality," he said. "... Manufacturers have not really gotten the message yet."

Timmons visited Automation Alley on Monday, February 12, during his stop in Michigan on his State of Manufacturing Tour.

Timmons will make visits in eight states over the next 10 days, with the mission of highlighting "manufacturing's optimistic future, the rewarding opportunities the industry offers and the urgent need to build a modern manufacturing workforce across the country," according to NAM.

The rebound in manufacturing job numbers since the Great Recession tops 1 million, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 12.5 million people were employed across all sectors in January, compared to more than 13.5 million a decade earlier.

Yet as policy shifts toward what Timmons defined as the most supportive era for manufacturing in years, at least 364,000 jobs are unfilled.

Forecasts, based on expectations from the recent federal tax plan, say that the nation could gain 2 million new manufacturing jobs by 2025.

And the industry is focused on increasing apprenticeship programs and other educational programs to build a workforce that's capable of doing the jobs that increasingly involve technology and higher-level skills.

Yet while the industry considers how to fill jobs and works to make the industry seem more attractive, many employers do not pay the middle-class wages common in previous generations.

Data from the BLS show that average U.S. non-supervisory production wages have been climbing since 2008. The January average was $21.31 per hour, up from $20.63 a year earlier - just over a 3 percent increase.

Many manufacturing jobs in Michigan are advertised at paying $11.50 to $14 per hour. That's less than $30,000 per year.

Timmons said he'd expect some of those wages to be entry level, and would predict opportunity for higher pay to grow along with an employee's longevity at a company.

"You see wage growth as you're employed by the same place in a number of years," he said.

But in Southeast Michigan, there's more at play. Kelly said many manufacturers in the region weathered many years where "every year you could count on a little less" as contracts went overseas or automotive companies crushed suppliers on costs. Many remain stuck in that scared mindset.

He said two factors will drive wages up. The first is a business owner knowing "there's going to be a steady stream of cashflow."

The second: Automation.

"If you can do more with less, you can also raise wages," Kelly said.

Timmons also spoke about the role of automation, which he emphasized didn't mean the elimination of jobs. Instead, he said, it will take the place of low- and no-skill jobs and replace them with work that will require training.

"Innovation and automation are expanding what American workers can do," he said, connecting it to the job growth and expected increases in output. " ... They're transforming our industry for the better."

Kelly said that while that may be hard for some of the region's smallest manufacturers to embrace, the future will be brightest for the shops that don't make the cheapest product - success will be found through technology connections to higher-level suppliers and automakers.

The ones making those changes to the so-called Industry 4.0, which includes additive manufacturing and robotics, are among the companies that generated $90 million-plus in products in 2016, an increase from just under $80 million a decade earlier. Just over $50 million is exported.

Meanwhile, nearly 600,000 people in Michigan work in manufacturing - about 14 percent of the state's workforce.

The next steps for the state is to fill the open jobs, agreed the experts on Monday.

"The economy will respond," Timmons said. "People will be seeing higher wages."